1. Field of the Invention
The present application is directed to an improved advertising system for use in shopping carts and shopping baskets used by consumers to carry merchandise within a store and to their vehicle in a parking lot.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Prior to the filing of the applicant's '819 and '437 applications, there were a wide variety of different shopping carts available in the commercial marketplace. U.S. Pat. No. 5,613,696 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,794,953 (discussed in detail in the '819 application), illustrate typical prior art approaches to providing an advertising message in a shopping cart. The applicant's general conclusion about the prior art systems was that they utilized impermanent, flimsy advertising materials which detracted from a positive branded image and therefore many image conscious companies have avoided use of shopping cart advertising.
Furthermore, shopping carts are frequently taken out of doors by customers to load purchased products into their cars so that the carts are frequently exposed to rain, snow, and freeze/thaw temperature cycles. For this reason, even if an advertising display material were aesthetically acceptable when first installed onto a cart, the prior art materials could quickly deteriorate into an aesthetically unacceptable appearance. Moreover, shopping carts are frequently nested together in a stacked arrangement by store personnel for transportation and storage in the store parking lot or within the store itself. This means that the advertising materials can often be exposed to forceful mechanical contact with other carts or with the shopping cart corral structures found in many parking lots. For these reasons shopping cart advertising display materials should have a very high degree of aesthetic appeal, yet be durable enough to maintain that appeal when exposed to the challenges of the retail environmental and to harsh outdoor weather conditions. The prior art systems did not fully meet these objectives.
Another problem with prior art shopping cart advertising display systems is that the installation and maintenance of the advertising signs is more cumbersome and involves more expense than the present applicant believes to be desirable. This is because the companies that sell advertising space on such carts have attempted to prevent retail customers from removing their advertising signs by making removal from the cart relatively difficult for children or others without immediate access to the required hand tools. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,677,570 discloses that it may include a plastic shell portion that is designed to protect the advertising sign displayed therein from the attentions of children or adolescents.
Applicant's prior '819 and '437 patent applications were directed, in part, to solving such problems by providing a high quality look and feel advertising system for use in wheeled shopping carts. The high quality shopping carts of the '819 and '437 applications include advertising material integrally molded into the transparent structural components (sidewalls, front wall, front gate, back wall, a bottom wall, and/or section dividers) of the basket portion of a wheeled cart. While the applicant's '819 and '437 patent applications provide high quality advertising messages to consumers in wheeled shopping carts, applicant believes that it would be advantageous to have a high quality advertising system which allowed for even more efficient, low cost advertising message substitution in wheeled shopping carts or in hand carried shopping baskets.